Most Commented

Agents report more Chinese buyers active in Colorado

Kentwood City Properties broker associate Liz Richards has sold three of the 12 units on the University Park Row Homes to Chinese buyers. Six of the 12 units are sold. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

As the listing agent for a new development near the University of Denver, Liz Richards has sold six row homes since December — and who was buying them came as a surprise.

"Half of them are Chinese buyers with cash — there seems to be a lot of cash," said Richards, a broker with Kentwood City Properties in Denver. "This is a brand-new trend."

Among international buyers purchasing U.S. homes, the Chinese trail only Canadians, and their share of the market is growing faster than any other group, according to a report last summer from the National Association of Realtors.

When it comes to the United States, Chinese buyers are starting to look far beyond California, the target of about half of their purchases.

"Many Chinese buyers have only a general sense of Colorado and are unfamiliar with the state's different real estate markets," said Andrew Taylor, co-CEO of Juwai.com, a Hong Kong-based website that markets international properties to Chinese buyers.

Searches for Colorado homes nearly tripled last year, with Boulder and Colorado Springs the most popular areas searched, Taylor said.

Chinese investors put $30.8 billion into overseas properties in 2012, including $9 billion in the United States. They are not only stepping forward at a time when buyers from Europe and Mexico are retreating but have shown a willingness to take on more expensive homes.

Advertisement

Chinese buyers paid a median price of $425,000 for their U.S. home purchases in 2012, according to the NAR, more than double the $183,000 median price shelled out by Canadian buyers.

Those prices line up with Richards' experience at the University Park Row Homes, which are priced near $400,000. About 69 percent of the time, the Chinese pay all cash.

Golden Realtor Jim Smith, after hearing the pitch from Juwai.com at the NAR convention in San Francisco in November, signed up and hired a student from Colorado School of Mines to translate his listings into Mandarin.

"There is a factor here of them wanting to export their dollars," Smith said. "They want to move their wealth out of the country before the Communists seize it if there is a change in attitude."

In its survey of Chinese buyers in San Francisco, Juwai.com found that lifestyle was the top motivator, followed by finding a place for a child's education, then investment opportunity and immigration.

"They are shrewd investors, and the purchase is good for them as an investment and good for their lifestyles," said Jung Lindas, a Realtor with Good-acre & Co. in Boulder.

Lindas, who is fluent in Korean, said she has worked with a range of Asian buyers looking to diversify, including recently with Hong Kong clients who could have gone anywhere in the U.S.

"They decided Boulder fit their needs," she said. "The environment is attractive — with clean air and the freedom to do outdoor activities."

Instead of viewing the purchase as a "second" home, Lindas said the discussion is more about having two "first" homes.

China's economy has doubled in size over the past seven years and is expected to double again in the next decade, generating a huge rise in investable assets in the process, Taylor said.

China has about 63 million mostly self-made entrepreneurs who have the financial resources to purchase homes abroad, and they are looking at listings in every state on Juwai.com except for Alaska, Nebraska and Minnesota.

They mostly pass on rural and vacation areas in favor of urban and suburban homes, which are about evenly split between attached and detached, according to the NAR.

Lydia Lin, a broker-owner with One Realty who speaks Mandarin, said she recently received a call out of the blue from a Chinese national passing through town.

"They wanted a good deal," she said, "and they heard Denver offered them."

Missy Franklin, Jenny Simpson, Adeline Gray and three other Colorado women could be big players at the 2016 Rio OlympicsWhen people ask Missy Franklin for her thoughts about the Summer Olympics that will begin a year from Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, she hangs a warning label on her answer.